After being ordered to block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, ISP Elisa indicated it would fight the court ruling by taking it to appeal. Yesterday the Court of Appeal delivered an initial blow to the Finnish service provider by upholding the original ruling handed down in 2011. Undeterred, Elisa says it will take its case all the way to the country's Supreme Court.

During May 2011, the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) and the Finnish branch of IFPI announced that they had filed a lawsuit at the District Court in Helsinki.

The action, against Finnish ISP Elisa, required a total blockade of The Pirate Bay and was yet another example of rightsholders attempting to shift the burden for copyright enforcement onto third parties in the technology sector.

But unlike ISPs overseas such as Virgin Media and O2 in the UK, who recently blocked The Pirate Bay without even attempting a fight, Elisa was bullish from the start, describing the censorship strategy as “flawed.”

Elisa’s fight, however, had only just begun. In October 2011, the Helsinki District Court ordered the ISP to block the domain names and IP-addresses of the world’s most-visited torrent site. Elisa immediately announced an appeal, but in the meantime would still have to block The Pirate Bay or face a 100,000 euro fine.

Yesterday, Elisa received yet another blow. The Court of Appeal rejected the ISP’s application and upheld the District Court’s ruling from October 26 2011. The Pirate Bay will remain blocked to all Elisa customers, at least for now, but the road doesn’t end here. The ISP has announced that will take its case all the way to the country’s Supreme Court.

“It is legally very complex and difficult, so it is necessary to receive a preliminary ruling from the Supreme Court,” Elisa Business Director Henri Korpi said in a statement.

“We attach importance to intellectual property rights and the players should focus on measures that can truly reduce piracy in practice by distributing content on the web at a reasonable price and at the same time as the rest of their distribution.”

Elisa’s attitude of getting to the root of the problem rather than blocking it is shared by UK business ISP Fluidata. Yesterday their account manager Andi Soric wrote about the out-of-date and precarious position of the recording industry’s business model.

“Self-made artists can now upload audio and use media platforms such as YouTube and MySpace to broadcast their talent to millions of people at virtually no cost,” Soric wrote. “In my view, this can only be positive for music and society as a whole and makes you wonder how many stars have been missed in the last 50 years due to the costs attached to recording and distributing music.”

But even though systems like BitTorrent have driven distribution costs down to virtually nil, artists hoping to use torrent sites like The Pirate Bay as a springboard are increasingly finding their paths blocked by the recording and movie industries. That negative position will only get worse in the months to come.